Secret Algorithms Controlling You! Are You the User… or the Product?

Are algorithms helping—or handling—you? Frank and Dustin dive into how recommender systems, data brokers, and AI-powered platforms shape your news, drives, purchases, health, and even relationships. From TikTok fear-mongering to Cambridge Analytica, OPM’s breach fallout, Google Maps routing incentives, Amazon “sponsored” defaults, and Facebook’s engagement shift—this episode asks the hard question: are you in control, or are you being steered?

We also hit the nuance: when AI spots tumors earlier and flags outbreaks faster, do the ends justify the data means? Echo chambers, algorithm “poisoning,” privacy laws (or lack thereof in the U.S.), and the real-world line between convenience and manipulation—plus the wild story of a nurse who could smell disease before doctors could test for it.

🎧 Subscribe for sharp, funny, no-fluff cyber talk every week.

💬 Drop your take: are you comfortable trading agency for convenience?

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👥 Hosts: T. Frank Downs & Dustin Brewer

🎙️ Podcast + clips: @LegitimateCybersecurity

🧠 Subreddit: r/LegitimateCyber

🔔 Like, subscribe, and share to beat the algorithm at its own game.

Chapter Breaks

00:00 – Cold Open: “If you’re not paying, you’re the product.”

01:20 – TikTok: personalization vs. geopolitics

02:37 – OPM breach & SF-86: the most intimate data spill

04:08 – Data brokers & geolocation: finding anyone (even Congress)

05:22 – The U.S. privacy gap (hello CCPA, goodbye federal law)

06:11 – Shadow credit files: LexisNexis, GM telemetry & your insurance

07:45 – Maps that nudge: are routes sold to brands?

08:23 – Amazon’s “sponsored” defaults & subtle purchase steering

09:39 – “Emergent behaviors” & divisive feed design

10:53 – Can we trust any filter—and do we have options?

11:30 – AI is code (and code is messy): hallucinations & ad-stuffed search

12:27 – Living private vs. living miserable: the balance problem

15:16 – Biased training data: we met the trainer and it’s us

17:47 – Medicine wins: diagnostics vs. the data tradeoff

19:30 – Joy Milne & “the smell of disease”: human pattern-finding

#cybersecurity #algorithms #privacy #ai #databrokers #tiktok #opm #EchoChambers #RecommenderSystems #DigitalEthics #Nudging #LegitimateCybersecurity

22:44 – AI for signals, humans for meaning

23:34 – Robots, laundry… and the rental future

24:57 – Do people want out of echo chambers?

26:57 – Comfort vs. being “right”: why rage sells

27:24 – Algorithm poisoning ethics: self-defense or sabotage?

28:11 – The kindness trap: loneliness, AI compliments & harms

30:16 – What practitioners should do: policy, guardrails, education

32:25 – The inevitable? Choosing agency in a steered world

33:16 – Outro: “If this was recommended to you…”